Police Dispatch

Finders Keepers, Scroungers Banned From Property

Caught in possession of a stranger's lost bicycle, a man tried to explain his (obvious) intention of stealing it by likening the deed to simply "finding ... money on the street," a University of Arizona Police Department report stated.

A UA police aide called an officer to the intersection of Tucson Boulevard and Second Street, near where the aide had spotted a suspicious male riding a bike while pulling an additional bike alongside him.

When the officer stopped and questioned the man, he admitted that the bike in tow didn't belong to him, alleging that two days prior he'd "almost hit it" with his own bike when he encountered it lying in the middle of the Speedway Boulevard bike lane two days ago—so, he said, he'd taken it upon himself to stash the other bike behind the UA computer center ... apparently trying to imply that he'd moved it for safety reasons.

He said that day he'd happened to return to campus, and since the bike was still where he'd put it behind the building, he presumed it was "abandoned"—so he'd decided to keep it for himself.

When the officer inquired as to why he hadn't immediately called the authorities to report the bike as abandoned—and found—the subject replied, "It's just like finding a bag of money on the street."

The officer provided no response other than telling the subject he'd better not be caught on campus doing anything fishy in future, or he'd get an exclusionary order banning him from all UA property. The officer then confiscated the bike, seeing that it even had a sticker identifying it as a UA student's bike, through which he tracked down the rightful owner.